Chapter 43

When faced with the prospect of having to crack into what was most likely the single most fortified bunker on the planet, Nebo Aldric knew he didn't need anything fancy - just a way in. As well, since the entire idea backing up his plan was to hit Atlas with huge amounts of shock and awe, he'd wanted said way in to be a little explosive. So, these in mind, he'd asked for a bunker buster of some sort, or at least just a big bomb. Something to crack open the entrance a bit, to make an entrance in a literal and metaphorical sense.

And holy shit, did the United States deliver.

They gave him a bunker buster alright, and they certainly gave him a bomb - they gave him the Mother of All Bombs. Dropped from a bomber he'd almost missed passing overhead entirely, the Air Force had come in with a Massive Ordinance Air Blast. With an explosive yield of eleven tons of TNT, the bomb they'd just lobbed at the academy was the single strongest non-nuclear bomb in America's arsenal. While Aldric wasn't aware that the bomb wasn't a bunker buster per-se, something else he wasn't aware of was that the Admiral who'd cleared the bomb's deployment had just as similar a flare for the dramatic as he did. He knew first and foremost that Atlas Academy was to this kingdom what the White House, or the Kremlin, or Buckingham Palace was to their respective countries on Earth. Dropping this on the most important target in Atlas would have a powerful impact on the defenders, but obliterating it and opening up an entrance to the system of bunkers below it would not just demoralize everyone involved in the defense of the kingdom, but would allow Aldric his best chance to dive into the bunkers and end the war.

Of course, all Aldric was aware of was the fact that, for the second time in a single day, he'd had a functional weapon of mass destruction thrown at him, and this time he hadn't just been far away, this time he'd been at its minimum safe distance. Any closer, he knew, and he'd have either been killed, burned, or maimed. Even as close as he was, he'd still been hit by gale-force winds, and had felt enough heat that he may as well have walked into an oven. Aldric played it as safe as he could, and operated as though the bomb he'd seen dropped was a nuke, and as such he stayed down and he continued cowering, covering his head and averting his eyes, until a full sixty seconds had passed and the ringing faded from his ears.

Once he stood up, Aldric saw the last vestiges of a mushroom cloud fading away, and found that nearly the entire academy was just gone. Some of the buildings at the academy's farthest edges still remained, and the skeletal structures of some of the buildings closest to ground zero still stood, as warped, blackened masses of metal and masonry. All of the other buildings had either been blasted to rubble by the shockwave, or incinerated by the fires of the explosion. It was belching dark smoke into the sky in a single huge, thick column.

Aldric stood to his feet, folding his hands behind his back and clenching his tonfa tight, as he pursed his lips, and let his shoulders slump with a sigh. Seeing the mushroom cloud fade into a nondescript pillar of smoke made him keenly aware of how god damn tired he was. It was less of a physical exhaustion than a mental one, but - also keenly aware of where these thoughts would take him - Aldric tossed those thoughts to the wayside and jogged into the expanding cloud of burning dust and debris.

Once inside, he found the air choked and nearly impossible to breathe in, and was thankful for the mask both protecting and changing his face. He had to rely more on his radar than his eyes in order to see, and as he grew closer to the center of the explosion, he slowed to a brisk walk. At the center of the crater made by the bomb, Aldric found the ground gaping wide open, like a wound torn into the flesh. He stood at the precipice of a long elevator shaft, partially scorched black by the explosion, reaching deep into the earth - so deep that, without extending his radar, he couldn't see its bottom. Despite this, he knew what was down there: Literally every Atlesian soldier not currently dueling with the United States. All of them, no doubt, assembling in the hallway he had seen earlier, in their killzone. This would be their Thermopylae, their last stand at their final remaining defensive position.

He wasn't quite fond of the implications of that analogy, considering who won that war in the end.

Perhaps a better one, considering the situation, would be that of the Titan, Atlas, with the weight of the world on its shoulders. Here, Aldric knew, was the last bastion of territory firmly under the control of the Atlesian Government - and the only still independent slice of land on Remnant. All of the other kingdoms had fallen by now, only Atlas remained - them holding the weight of their world and their way of life in their hands, bearing that burden and not hesitating to do so, even though now they no doubt all but knew that their efforts would be in vain, that these struggles would only result in them dying tired, as opposed to emerging victorious.

With a deep yawn, Aldric steeled himself, and then stepped over the edge, plunging into the elevator shaft leading to Atlas' bunker. The wind billowing across the false face he wore as he plummeted deeper and deeper underground, Aldric supposed he respected their bravery in this, in what Atlas was doing, in its meaning. Here was a single kingdom facing the titanic juggernaut of a country multiple times its size, and flying in the face of a planet united against it, still putting on their war face and still willing to fight to the bitter end. Respectable, brave, and unequivocally human.

It was this respect that prompted Aldric's following actions, as he used his semblance to 'cup' as much of the smoke from the surface and in the elevator shaft as he could, and bring it with him as he dived into the bunker. It took three full minutes for him to reach the bottom, and with a pulse of his semblance he landed with a light tap, a dense cloud of smoke, soot, and ash surrounding him, and naught but a single blast door separating him from Atlas' doomsday bunker.

Ah man... He sighed, shaking his head. Wish I hadn't pulled out the lightsaber, last I saw him. Or that I had time to practice with the energy sword. Either would do. It almost physically hurt to be presented with another amazing Darth Vader opportunity, and to have to avoid it for fear of creating a chink in his anonymity.

So, as much as it pained him, Aldric simply reached forward with his semblance, grabbing the blast door on all sides, and pushing. With a loud crack of stone being torn apart and the sound of metal grinding, Aldric telekinetically hoisted the blast door into the air, and then allowed the hot, black smoke to billow in and fill the corridor. Immediately, gunfire from one end began blasting down to the other end, but Aldric's forethought paid off - in not having destroyed the blast door but rather tearing it from the wall, he now had a gigantic, foot-and-a-half thick hunk of various metals, designed solely to withstand assaults such as the one Atlas was throwing at him. Better yet, was that with the smoke billowing in and choking the air in darkness, Atlas had no idea he'd made himself a barrier, and as such they continued firing as he continued to advance, behind the cover of both his new favorite shield and the encroaching smoke.

The walk through the long corridor took five minutes, during which Atlas never stopped firing. By the time Aldric was within a stone's throw of their fortifications, they'd shot, blasted, and burned away at enough of his blast doors that they were a fraction of the thickness they had been when he'd torn them from the wall. Unfortunately, their efforts were too little, too late - and when he arrived, he first telekinetically grabbed as many weapons as he could, and either tore them from the hands of their shooters, or otherwise disabled them. In the brief pause of shock and reaction, Aldric threw the blast doors at them, crushing scores of men behind them and all but literally paving the way for him to charge forward.

Now standing in the midst of a thick cloud of black smoke from the surface, and thin gray smoke from the gunfire, Aldric realized that he'd done in five minutes what likely would have taken hours, or even days, for the armies up above to do. Expanding on that, he only realized as he was doing it, that he was dispatching, knocking out, and in some places even killing Atlesian soldiers left and right, almost with no effort, where even just a few months ago he'd struggled fighting his way through Adam Taurus' camp. What had happened? Had he just gotten that strong without noticing? Had this been natural growth? Or was it fueled by his steadily increasing understanding and mastery of his powers?

Either way, it's concerning. If it's the former... Thought Aldric, as he approached a secondary blast door, that led into the huge and branching corridors of Atlas' bunker. I've gotten even more fuckawful powerful in an even smaller amount of time. And if it's the latter, what would ever happen if I find myself unable to access that magic? Would I just drop back down to where I was when we fought Amber? Would I lose all my power completely? Would I die? None of those thoughts were too appealing to him, least of all the idea that he was only powerful because of the good graces of a power he truly didn't understand.

Aldric shook his head, banishing these thoughts as he continued on forward, numbly. The last few days, as well as the initial battle for Beacon - everything since he'd woken up to have all of the Watchmen meet in person - had left him feeling exhausted, and having to expend energy on complex thoughts wasn't helping at all; he wanted and needed to be finished with all of this so he could try and figure out how he'd move forward, because even before he'd secured Earth's support in the Salem effort, his plans had been shot. So, resolve steeled again if only for the moment, Aldric continued on - again breaking a blast door off of the wall and passing through; now, however, instead of walking into what should have been an instant kill-zone, he found himself in more homely and less utilitarian corridors and surroundings. A scan with his radar showed that all of these corridors branched out and out, forming walkways and pathways, and that Atlas hadn't even bothered fortifying everything, but rather focused on choke points, where these branching paths converged.

Were Aldric a braver man, he'd try seeing how good of a Kitty Pryde impersonation he could pull off and try phasing through the walls. His knee-jerk idea was to try and slide his own atoms through the hugely empty space that existed between each atom, but with how mentally exhausted he felt, he didn't want to pull that off, lose his concentration, and then an arm, or a leg, or a few lungs, by having them fused into the walls. However, he also knew that Atlas would love nothing more than to whittle him down through attrition, before he even reached Ironwood's command center, and that would be exactly what would happen, if he tried going through everyone between here and there.

So, as he'd done with Rayne, Yang, and Winter, when the going got tough, he refused to play fair. Ironwood's rules were to go through everyone to get to him - but Aldric's were to take the shortest and easiest path between him and his objective, and right now? That involved halting the atomic movement of small patched in the walls, freezing them solid and making them brittle, such that a single punch from his cybernetic arm blasted straight through in a cloud of ice and chilled, frosty air. No magic, not nearly as much stamina as fighting through a few hundred groups of fortified soldiers, and it cut his travel time down in half, allowing him to beeline it for Ironwood.

To his credit, the General seemed to realize what he was getting up to pretty fast, and had people mobilizing, moving them back around his command center. Of course, Aldric's response to that was the only logical extension of the trick he'd used on the aircraft carrier, which itself, appropriately, was an extension of what he'd done to Rayne months ago: He first telekinetically ripped the weapons out of the hands of the soldiers amassing around the door, then closed every single one of their throats, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And once the last soldier stopped struggling, Aldric went through the next wall, leaned up against the door leading to Ironwood's command center, where everyone inside was arming themselves and pointing those weapons at the door. Aldric considered his next actions very carefully, and after a microsecond of staring at the door, he kicked it open, slamming his foot into it, right next to the doorknob. With a little help from his semblance, the spy obliterated the door and sent it flying inwards, a crumpled mass of metal and shrapnel.

He was instantly met by a tidal wave of gunfire hurtling straight for him. The room was filled with the flashes of barrels lighting, the thunderous cracks of propellants exploding, and the whipping and zooming of bullets hurtling through the air, and at the face of it all was Aldric, standing there with his hands held out to his sides, an expectant frown, and an arced eyebrow on his borrowed face. The bullets crossed the meager distance between the shooters and the target in less than the time it took to blink, and then stopped fast, flattening themselves against an invisible barrier, remaining aloft for but a moment as their kinetic energy dissipated, and then dropped to the ground.

After ten seconds of sustained gunfire, everyone finally seemed to run out of ammunition, and Aldric, though winded and needing to take great effort to hide it, remained completely untouched, save for a hell of a series of bruises he could feel welling up over his torso. As great as he'd gotten with this little hat trick, he wasn't good enough to circumvent physics - and just like how people with kevlar vests broke ribs when they took bullets, he broke ribs and bruised when he did the same.

"Point taken." Aldric nodded, slowly growing used to his Solid Snake grunt. "Allow me to retort:" He then held up a hand, fingers splayed out.

Ironwood, at the center of the room and with his back to a dais with a wide, flat console, widened his eyes and clenched his hand harder around his gun. Unfortunately for him, this effort was too little, too late - and with a telekinetic pull, Aldric wrenched every gun, knife, bomb, and other such weapon off of the persons of the people in the room, hoisting them into the air and pulling them right over to him. They all collected into a beachball-sized sphere, and hovered there for a moment, before Aldric lowered them to his hand - where he used the Power Glove, sneaking a few nanites into the mix, which instantly began eating away at it and replicating. As more of the mass of weapons began to vanish and melt, Aldric slid those machines back into his sleeves, making it appear as though he were systematically deconstructing them all into gray sand, and absorbing them onto himself. Aldric used this both for intimidation, and to have something to wrap his ailing chest.

Once the room was disarmed, Aldric lowered his hand, and pulled the tonfa and the bolter from his hips, placing them on a nearby table with a loud bang.

"See?" Aldric hummed, "your turn."

"You've a lot of gall to just walk in here, soldier -"

"Correction." Aldric interrupted, a finger held up, as he slowly approached the General. "Sailor." He swept a hand over his stolen uniform, "see, it's a blue uniform. Blue like the ocean."

This illicited the desired reaction, though not from the desired person, as a random soldier in a corner of the room blurted out, "you're not even a soldier?!"

Aldric grinned, "right you are, my good sir. And that leads wonderfully into my next point: I joined the Navy specifically because it didn't require front line fighting, so what little training I do have kind of..." He waved his fingers, "faded away, a few years back. And aside from a few moments I'm not proud of, I've no fighting experience period since then." He then briefly raised his hands, and then clapped them to his hips. "But here I am. The first guy they were able to give superpowers, and I literally made it into the center of your fortified bunker command center." Finished, he folded his hands behind his back.

This time, the right person took the bait, as Ironwood glared down at him, towering a full head and shoulders above the blue-garbed spy. "First." He repeated.

Aldric nodded, "caught that, didn't you?" Aldric asked, "and yes, first. Seriously, my good sir - we've been fighting for almost a month, now. Did you honestly think we wouldn't get ahold of some of your dust and figure out the right way to -" He nodded his head to the side, to avoid using the word 'snort' and ruin the persona. "- well... Use it?" He asked, "that'd be a dangerous gamble, General. But it's also why I'm here - allow me to reiterate: No formal combat training, a few fights under my belt, and I've had these powers for so little time it's astonishing how far I've come with them. So for all intents and purposes I'm equivalent to one of your academy students, and look at what I've done.

"Now consider the fact that yours is the last kingdom to be fighting my planet." Aldric continued, deepening the frown on Ironwood's face. "That means that literally everyone else is coming. Take that kind of strength, and add in more huntsmen - Earth huntsmen. Human huntsmen. If you last a day, you won't last two before we make it to your little bastion under the ground. And then... Oh boy, then you have no options, whereas we... Have several."

Now Ironwood realized he was being baited, but also that he had no choice but to take said bait. "And what would those be?"

"Well..." Grinned the terran, "there's several ways they can do it. First is the simplest: They just shove bodies down here, and kill and kill and kill, fighting their way here until they reach you -" He pointed up at the General, "and either force you to surrender, or kill you and subsequently decapitate your country and leave its civilians almost completely defenseless. See - that's option one!" He emphasized, "option two..." He held up a second finger, "they realize that since you're opposed to talking, that they'll either have to force a surrender, or just accept that the only way to win is to win completely, and they'll pound this bunker of yours with things much bigger than what they dropped to get me in here. Like what they dropped on Vale earlier today, and Mistral a while back." Ironwood's frown widened, fear entering his eyes as he understood Aldric's implication. "They'll just -" He snapped his fingers, "- end it, and deal with the consequences later. Take your fuckin' pick, General - nukes, chemical weapons, you name it, we'll use it. That's option two! But seeing as how they might actually want to keep your kingdom around for resource, trade, and perhaps even colonization purposes, blanketing the place in nuclear fallout, contaminating the ground water, and all that jazz, ain't a very attractive option..." He shook his head, clicking his tongue. "No.

"So that leads us to option three!" He rested his hands again behind his back, "this is the really scary, and simultaneously the really easy one, so listen up." He cleared his throat. "This one basically has them realize that, with your entire country stuck in a bunker with only one entrance or exit, they've got you by the balls, General! You people can last down here for awhile, but was this place really designed for perpetual inhabitance? Or just as a small little fallout shelter for you all to hide out in for a year or two before another country can come in and help you out?" He waited a few moments, and Ironwood's silence told him he was right: At the absolute best, they did have some facilities with which they could grow more food, but their entire country was down here. Growing that food would be a delaying action at best, they couldn't self-sustain down here.

So Aldric hammered that down home, "so all they have to do is park their soldiers, their bombs, their machines of war - right there at the edge. They just have to sit there and wait, for you to either come out fighting, and kill you all, for you to come out waving a white flag to surrender, or for you all to starve and die.

"And they will do any and all of that if they feel they have to, my good sir! Consequences won't even matter - because they control the narrative, back home. They can literally make up a story that completely justifies whatever they choose! And the people will believe it - because they hate you for what you did. Your kingdom's getting trashed? We had to obliterate a city twice the size of it! They'll believe anything that's told to them!

"And those are our options... But it'll take us a few days to realize they're open to us. Before then, you have a few options, too."

Ironwood crossed his arms, his frown now glowing with rage. "Surrender or die."

Aldric shrugged, "your words, not mine." He then opened up an innocent grin, "so what's it going to be?"

Faster than Aldric could blink, Ironwood punched him, burying his own metallic fist into Aldric's cheek. Aldric stumbled a step, but as he recovered, his radar - and a general lack of additional pain - told him that Ironwood didn't intend to follow up this attack with another. Cheek throbbing, Aldric straightened back up, turning his gaze back to the General, whose chest and shoulders heaved with increasingly furious breaths.

"One." Aldric grunted.

"Implying I get two more?" Ironwood heaved.

"No implications. Merely a number." Aldric straightened his posture, "am I to interpret your throwing hands at me as a refusal? Or an obstinate realization that no matter what you do, you still lose?" He asked, "that your only choice is the manner in which you lose, and the number of people you lose as a result?"

Another strike, this time a right cross as opposed to a left.

"Two." Aldric straightened up, a small line of blood leaking out of his face. "Like it or not, General, those are your choices. I beg of you to make the right one - because as much as we aren't afraid of fighting, that does not mean we inherently like to do so, or that we seek it out."

"Says the man part of the military whose first act upon entering my world was to bomb it."

"Because we were fighting an enemy from your world. An enemy, as we understand it, sent by your country specifically. All three other countries we took down and conquered in days, but yours was the only one we had any need or desire to fight, as opposed to simply decapitate. Yours was the only one to actually wrong us." He said, slowly. "General, from my leaders, I am perhaps their one and only olive branch - the single time they will try to talk to you, such that they can at least say they tried. To be succinct, I am the path of least resistance." He rumbled, "the only choice you have is the one you have to make right now. They both are hard to swallow, but one invites the hand we do not arm, and the other invites the arms we hold back for our worst and hardiest enemies.

"So please, General. Make the right one."

Were one to ask her, Rosa Thren would describe her days as comfortably dull. Even after the horrific storm of news coming out of Vale and the other four kingdoms for those few hours, of metal eagles and storms of fire and brass, of unknown kingdoms invading with the skill and power of millions of Huntsmen, her days hadn't changed. She made her weekly lien, had her provided room and board, and saw a steady enough stream of travelers that even without the CCT network, she was appraised enough of local news that she felt her finger was close enough to the pulse so as to be said to be on it. Even if the travelers recently were more and more refugees who had chosen to brave the uncivilized wilds, and even if they only had stories of terrans, they still had news.

More to point, her days were comfortable and dull. She was close enough to Vale and the minor villages to get news, but far away enough to not be considered any kind of target of opportunity for invaders. Even Grimm didn't often come this way, and if they did, more guests were armed than weren't - only the young, stupid, or naive ever walked the countryside without some kind of weapon, and were any of those three to come across her inn, they did make a small modicum of lien selling small arms to them. Ever since she'd first found herself here, her days fell into a nice routine: Wake up, clean the bar, prepare a small meal, and then wait around, watch some television, read some books, and wait for someone to come requiring a certain kind of fuel. Some would call this kind of work soul-wrenching, but she found comfort in it, and that was something few could say.

On this night, more than a month into the invasion, however, she found a small amount of that comfort had been sapped by some of the news she so looked forward to. That these terrans had shot Vale with a sun, that this sun had sapped anything and everything with electricity of its power, and that they'd either captured or killed Professor Ozpin and the Council of Three. It was disheartening - just like that, Vale was lost. There was some solace in the thought that the other three kingdoms, especially Atlas, could still fight, but this solace was lost in the idea that she wasn't in those other kingdoms, was she? No, she was in Vale - or, more specifically, Sanus, close to Vale - and as such she just had to wait here and weather the storm, hope and pray that the CCT network would come back at least before the year was out, and that the terrans weren't bent on world domination, and would be content merely with the major kingdoms.

These thoughts were most of her company today, as she sat back in her bar, reading an adventure book. She periodically looked up and checked her surroundings, but the somber and silent night had yet to be broken by anything even resembling a traveler -

Or, perhaps she'd spoken too early.

Looking up now, she saw a man in an ocean-blue coat and pants entering the inn. He had a firm face and closely cropped brown hair, but what she noticed above all was the strange, blocky pattern covering his clothes, and the exhausted look behind his deeply blue eyes. He had a gun she'd never seen before strapped to his hip, and a cinch-bag hanging from one of his shoulders. There was a bandage on one of his cheeks, lightly marred from the inside with his blood, and as he turned to the bar and approached, she saw more red stains near to his legs and his torso, staining the clothes. He walked with the posture of a man bearing more than his fair share of injuries but trying to hide them, ever-so-slightly hunched over, and with his elbows pressed against his flank.

The blue-garbed man walked with a barely hidden grimace, and made for the first table closest to him, whereupon he sat down with a huff. Rosa brushed her hair behind her large doe ear and shut her book with a light thump. As she circled around the bar and made her way over to him, she saw him remove a pair of gloves, revealing one hand of tan flesh, then one hand of dark metal. Next he unbuttoned and undid the zipper on his jacket, sliding it off and revealing a dark shirt underneath, as well as more of his arms - showing the flesh covered in thin scars, and the dark metal covered in scorched and faded paint.

Then he pulled his face off.

Rosa actually stopped wholesale at that - she watched the injured and scarred newcomer grab at his unbandaged cheek, not with the deft tenderness of two fingers, but the rough handling of his fist, and pull. His face stretched comically, as though made of rubber or he were in a cartoon, and then he pulled up, and she saw his skin slide against itself, his entire face slowly sliding upwards and along his head. It was only after the bottom portion of his face slid over his jaw, and revealed another jaw underneath it, that she realized this man was wearing an unbelievably realistic prosthetic mask, and was removing it to reveal -

Her jaw dropped.

It wasn't uncommon for huntsmen to come through this inn - while not a major road, it was situated between two minor villages, each of which was well enough off to be able to hire huntsmen should the Grimm ever become too big or too pressing of an issue. What was uncommon, however, was when bandits became an issue - something she had only ever experienced twice in her decade here at this inn - and even more uncommon would be a huntsman, unbidden and unpaid, solving that issue in a night. Then to round things off, what was most uncommon of all would be that very huntsman returning to this inn out of the blue - perhaps appropriately, given his new attire.

A warm smile blessed her face, only briefly lessened when she remembered the dark promise he'd made when rejecting her help the last time he had been here. This thought prompted another - the lingering question of whether or not that promise was related to what was happening to the world at this very moment. But she shook both of these away; no matter the coincidence, she didn't need to fear this man. No evil person so easily capable of walking away, as he had been, would have turned back around.

As she reached his tableside, she noticed then that the last she'd seen him, he'd had two arms - and the sclera of his eyes had been white, not a more muted gray than the firm gunmetal color of his irides. Then she realized how older he appeared to be, despite scant months having passed since their first and last meet. There was a weight to his shoulders, a sorrow etched in the lines of his face and the glow of his eyes, and the air of regret and shame surrounding him.

She approached the table now with some caution in her step, a notepad clenched in one hand, both cradled in front of her stomach. "Mister... Drake, am I remembering correctly?" She asked, putting on the air that the encounter had been so long ago as to partially fade from memory.

Drake moved sluggishly, rubbing at his face with his metal hand, the nearly inaudible sound of its servos grinding and winding filling the otherwise silent air, before being drowned out by a long, drawn-out sigh. He nodded once, "you're doing better than me... I'm ashamed to admit I just plain forgot your name." He admitted, in a tired voice.

"Rosa, Mister Drake." She said with a warm smile and a practiced nod, not too deep, but not too light. "Rosa Thren. I would hope you at least remember the Inn?" She prodded.

To which, he nodded. "Only place in the worlds, at the moment, I trust my secrets to stay such."

Rosa frowned, "it sounds as though you require something a bit stronger than last time, Mister." She opined.

"Oh trust me I would love absolutely nothing more than to turn to the vice, but I know a functional alcoholic and I'd rather not smell like him." He said, "no... No, I'll just have water tonight. I'm going to be needing the faculties." He said, brushing both hands through his hair.

Rosa hurried to get his water, and upon returning, noticed that Drake's condition hadn't improved - rather, the single minute she'd been gone somehow seemed to dampen his spirits even more. So as she slid the mug across the table, she paused, frowning for a moment in debate, then sat down with him.

"The last time you were here, I told you I thought you were a good man, you know." She began.

Drake snorted, "oh do I have a hell of a story for you."

"You said something similar the last time, too." She said, with a nod. "And when I tried to offer any help..."

"No."

"Exactly." She nodded, "but last time, you were in better spirits. Here, though... There is a weight to you. A shadow. I am hoping I could get a different answer." She said, as he set down his cup, eying her with dull, half-open eyes. "Because I do not think you would return here if not to seek some sort of help."

This got a reaction, a blithe smile and a sidewards nod of the head. "You're not wrong." He said, "but not right, either."

She frowned, considering this a victory from which she could move forward, "how so?"

"Help, yes. From you, no." Drake responded.

Rosa tilted her head, "then from who?"

Drake was silent for a moment, as he took a drink of water. He regarded her from the rim of his glass, and then the coat he'd hung off of the back of the chair slid off of it, then floating in the air and slithering through it towards the table. It presented its arm to her, upon which was a patch, colored red, white, and blue. She didn't recognize it immediately, until she'd realized she'd seen something similarly colored, with only one star, flying past her head the last time he had been here.

"Is this... From where your shield came?" She asked, looking up at him.

He grinned, "comin' again to save the motherfucking day, yeah." He nodded, before his smile tensed, and faded. "They're here now, matter of fact." He said, as the sound of thunder could be heard distantly. Drake leaned forward, "pretend you don't know me, Rosa. And please... Do not remember anything you may hear right now."

Rosa's frown returned, but it was wiped away by a look of momentary panic as the thunder grew louder, close, and faster, until it was a rhythmic staccato, almost sounding of beating drums. She looked to the window and saw the smallest bullhead she'd ever before beheld, with a rotating propeller blade as opposed to twin jet engines. It was coming down on the road for a landing, kicking up dirt and dust aplenty, its rotorblades slowing down once its landing skits touched the ground. A door on its side slid open, and out hopped five men in uniforms and body armor, not dissimilar to Drake's, but with green and tan coloration. They all held tubular rifles, which were held aloft as they scanned the area, before lowering them and clearing a sixth man, who wore a uniform similar to theirs but without the armor, to depart.

"Stand up, Rosa." She heard Drake say, before an invisible hand hooked itself under one of her shoulders and lifted, snapping her out of her reverie.

Rosa steadied her stance, then backed away from Drake's table as the Inn's doors opened. The five soldiers and their escort entered the Inn, the Innkeep approaching to greet them, before being cut off by a soldier, who took a step forward and raised a single hand, his other remaining on his rifle in a clear declaration of intent. The others approached the dining area, where Rosa stood, though she hated the phrase, like a deer in headlights.

She was only snapped out of her reverie when a stocky soldier split away from the rest of them, approaching her personally and gesturing back to the bar with his hand. "Ma'am, if you could please?"

She blinked once, and nodded numbly, and allowed herself to be escorted away, only once casting a look over her shoulder, briefly seeing the less armored man sitting down in front of Drake, who nodded once, matching a greeting with a greeting of his own. A part of her desperately curious as to what they would be speaking of, but another part of her well aware that knowing such a thing may not be in her best health; not with a gun-toting foreigner watching her every movement.

As Rosa was escorted away, the man Aldric knew only as Coulson sat down, giving the Inn an appraising look. "Not a bad place." He said, nodding, and turning to Aldric.

Aldric nodded once, "not a bad people." He countered, "this is probably the only place I know that I could come close enough to trusting." He said, bluntly.

"You don't trust Earth? Or Ozpin? Or any of the Watchmen, for that matter?"

"I lived on Earth, Ozpin would fucking murder me if he knew what I was doing, and the rest of the Watchmen would do the same." Aldric responded, quietly. "Fact of the matter is, in any other situation there would be a worldwide manhunt out for me."

Coulson nodded, not even bothering to argue. "Speaking of the world..." He leaned forward, "he's been pretty adamant about your safety being confirmed, Ryan." He said, sliding a briefcase across the floor with his foot, which Aldric accepted. "Should have everything you told Ilyich about, in it."

Aldric nodded in thanks, "how about the girls?" He asked, "RWBY, CFVY, JNPR... My team, Taurus and the Fang..." He listed, "I don't have to get mad, do I? Because I've been mad. This last week has probably been the first week since I've been here that I haven't been mad. And during it I was tired through aura over-use." He grunted, "so my getting mad won't be pretty. Because I'll be taking the path of least resistance."

Coulson nodded, holding up a hand. "Don't worry, Ryan. We've kept our word." He said, "though, that grew hard the day after you left. When the blonde one woke up she damn near broke out trying to find you. The others could hear her trying and almost did the same."

"But?"

"But some tear gas fixed the problem real quick, I'll admit."

Aldric hummed with a disappointed sigh. He shook his head, "considering who I'm dealing with, I'm surprised that's all you did."

Coulson grinned, "who you're dealing with?" He parroted back.

"You tell me you aren't CIA, I'll kill you on principle." Aldric challenged, placing his bolter on the table.

The man gave the hand cannon a brief glance, "Warhammer." He nodded, impressed. "Would solve a lot of problems."

"I'll take that as a yes. No one in the army would have time enough to realize how I think and start doing that kind of research." Aldric paused, swirling his glass and the water inside it. "Or... Have a dozen little voices talking in their ear." He added, leaning over and looking into the small earbud nestled in the man's right ear.

Again, Coulson grinned and nodded. "Good eye. Good ear, Mister Ryan." He said, "back to point, Ozpin's dragging his feet. He won't make any deal until he knows all of you and your rescue team are safe, or he has their bodies."

"Please tell me you didn't ship him Yang's arm."

"You threw it in the ocean."

Aldric blinked, "oh..." Another blink, "oh yeah, I did." He shook his head, "whole fuckin' month's a blur, Coulson."

"As evidenced by you picking a philsopher's name and not a spy's."

"You've got me there." Aldric leaned back in his chair. "How long do I still have?" He frowned, "should be round-about thirty six hours."

"You just ended a war and went off the grid for a week. What the hell else could you have planned?"

"Something stupid, Coulson." Aldric let out a long sigh, turning his gaze to his glass and frowning deeply, in concentration. "It's always something stupid." He said, as the glass was lit with a pale glow, and slowly began to empty, the water draining out of it. "But Atlas is playing ball?"

Coulson, briefly transfixed by the glass, nonetheless nodded and turned back to Aldric. "They seem to be under the impression we'll nuke them to hell and back if they don't."

Aldric shrugged, "point was to put the fear of God into 'em." He focused again on the now bone dry glass, the light glow returning as it began to fill back up with water. "Had to have them absolutely convinced that more of me were coming, and even if there weren't, we had something just as good waiting."

"As much as I wish that were true, Ryan, the folks back home are starting to call you a living weapon of mass destruction. And since we still don't fully understand the science behind all of this, do you honestly think we'd start waking people up so soon?"

"Yes." Aldric deadpanned. "Yes I completely believe we would."

Coulson looked like he was ready to continue arguing, but paused, slumped his shoulders, then nodded. "Fair enough."

For the Record

World War 3 ended in a month.
You realize that, according to Einstein, we'll be fighting the next one with sticks and stones.

My little secret project is as finished as it can be. I got a care package from Coulson I'd like to drop off, but aside from minute additions and changes, I can't do anything more until I open up the care package and see what's inside.
Atlas also surrendered after we cracked open their bunker with a MOAB, and I threatened we'd go nuclear next.

Anyway, I'm typing this midflight. Just as 'fun' as it was the first time, but this time I'm on Earth, and with how fast I'm going I'm probably freaking NORAD the fuck out, I have thirty six (thirty five, really. Coulson took for-fucking-ever.) to get something done that needs to be done.

But, yeah. Just like I predicted, in the interests of Earth vs Remnant, Earth won, wholesale. Even without me, it wouldn't have gone much longer. I think it may have even gone faster, since I interrupted the blitzkrieg in Vale. Had I not, after they took it, everyone would have turned-tail and made for Atlas, and the entire UN would be bombing the shit out of it, not just the US.

Gawd dayumn, nothing will be the same after this. It's hard to fucking believe just two weeks ago my biggest worry was getting the Watchmen on the same page, and not killing eachother. Now I've got to worry about the aftermath of an interplanetary war, whether or not Taurus and Torchwick will even throw in with me now that things are so horrifically FUBAR, and what in God's fucking name Salem is going to do with all of this.
Oh, and there's the psychological damage the war may have had on my 'friends'.
That's a little important.

Although, right now, I'm going to something even fucking 'less important'.
Probably with the single greatest chance of me dying since I came to Remnant, to boot.

Aldric remembered, vividly, how bad jet lag could be after a long flight. As it turned out, he'd never experienced the far more personal kind of jet lag that came from personally holding oneself several thousand feet in the air and essentially throwing them from one end of a continent to another. Aldric felt like he'd just ran fifty miles in eight seconds, his entire body was tense and sore and his muscles and bones ached.

The good news was that, according to his phone, he was almost there.

The bad news was that he'd never been 'there' from so high up, so as much as he remembered the general area of 'there', that knowledge was useless in the air.

Regardless, Aldric's found himself reveling in an unseen benefit of his radar pulse: He didn't have to hold his phone up to his face to check the GPS. All he had to do was hit the button, the screen would pop on, and even from in his pocket he could see it fine. That allowed him to watch the ground as he flew over it, just underneath the clouds. He observed the green trees bleeding into the gray roads, he watched the multicolored cars sliding across the roads, oblivious of the eighteen year old flying above them. It was strange, being back on Earth and flying through its smog-choked air; it brought back the novelty of being able to fly in the first place, as though flying on Remnant and flying on Earth were two completely different things, conceptually.

After enough time passed that everything began to bleed together, his GPS suddenly chirped, letting him know he'd passed his destination entirely. After a few minutes of fiddling with it and hovering about until he found he was right over where it said he was, Aldric slid the phone back in his pocket and looked down. Four subdivisions and a few dozen houses, a lot of empty driveways.

Aldric stopped holding himself aloft, letting him plummet through the air and down to the ground. A brief pulse of his semblance softened his landing, and he found himself in an empty driveway. He slid his hands into his blue, camouflaged pockets, looking up at the two-story, gray house. He didn't need his radar to tell him no one was home - the lack of cars in the driveway told him as much.

With a light kick at the ground, Aldric started down the driveway, wondering where she was.

Aldric stomped up the stairs leading to the door, sliding his bag off of his back and fishing around for his wallet. He found that, though he didn't remember having done so at all, he'd wrapped that in tinfoil too.

Fuck, I must've been tired. He thought, as he dropped the bag to the ground and unwrapped the wallet. I mean... I still am, but there was a physical element, then. Not just solely a mental one. He thought, ignoring how physically exhausted he was now, thanks to his flight.

Out of his wallet he plucked a key, and pointedly ignored his driver's license, the picture of him from before Remnant. He stuffed the wallet in his back pocket and then stuck the key in the door. With a twist, the door opened up and swung open -

Aldric almost instantly fell into a defensive stance when something came bounding towards him, howling like a wild animal. His foot went from lightly raised to step inside, to instantly planted right back on the ground with a loud thud, one arm was thrust to his side and the other was brought up, fist clenched tightly. When the small speeding missile collided with his midsection he was halfway to burying his metal fist into its flank, before common sense and a small helping of sanity took over, and he realized he recognized this definitely as an animal, but perhaps not a wild one.

The husky was howling and whining loud enough to be heard by either end of the neighborhood, burying her face into Aldric's stomach and licking every inch of him she could find. Aldric found himself quickly on the verge of tears, as he knelt down to her level and reciprocated in kind, rubbing and petting her, laughing and cooing her name, telling her that Gerty was a good dog, asking if she'd missed him - she had to, else she wouldn't be freaking out like she was now. Gertie, meanwhile, as she was won't to do, didn't give a shit and was just rubbing every inch of her she could all over him, sniffing and licking at him, just reveling in the fact that he was home again.

"Ah, c'mon Gertie." Aldric stood up, kicking the door shut with a booted foot. "Let me get you something good. She keep 'em in the same place? Wanna treat?" He asked, causing Gertie to drop to her haunches, an excited look playing at her features. "Let's get a treat, girlfriend!" And she bolted off through the living room and to the kitchen, pausing at the latter's threshold to turn and make sure he was both following her, and still there in the first place.

Inside the wood-floored kitchen, Aldric followed the dog with practiced ease, circling around the chest-high table and towards a cabinet in the corner. He opened the top door and rifled through, until he found a plastic jar filled with dog treats. Feeling generous, Aldric grabbed a fistfull and then moved back to the table, tipping out the small pile onto it and then individually giving them to the husky, whose tail was wagging so fiercely and so quickly that her entire rear end was shaking back and forth. The first few he made easy on her, until he tossed one up into the air and she caught it deftly, resulting in him making her try out a few tricks until the final treat was all gone.

After spending a few minutes seated on the hardwood floor, his hands enveloped in her gray fur, and her nose scanning over his new arm, Aldric slowly hauled himself to his feet. Gertie now followed him as he stepped down the hallway to the right of the kitchen, she not even for a moment accepting the rear position and instead flanking him, making the normally cramped hallway even moreso, as he tried to avoid stepping on the canine's paws. At the end of the hallway he found a door with a poster, depicting Deadpool trying to pull at the doorknob and failing.

Aldric pushed the door open, with Gertie quickly bounding inside. He noticed her paws left marks on the hardwood floor, and looking around he found that everything was covered in a thin layer of dust; even the air smelled a little stale. He let out a small sigh as he looked around, the memories flowing back as he saw the walls, covered in movie, anime, and video game posters. He saw Caeser of the Apes staring down at him from horseback, a stormtrooper next to him and Big Boss in the field of red flowers above the two of them. Another deadpool, this one holding a teddy bear at gunpoint, was on the other side of the room, situated above a large, dusty mirror, itself hidden behind a television that looked like it hadn't been used in years. Aldric found his 'leaning tower of consoles' next to the television, his X-box at the bottom, where it belonged, with various Sony consoles climbing upwards until, like the reigning kings they were, his Nintendo consoles rested side by side at the top. All of them were covered in dust too, to the point where Aldric was pretty sure the X-box just wouldn't turn on if he tried, and the various power lights were dimmed and dulled by the lack of any interaction.

Gertie hopped up on Aldric's bunk bed, rolling around in it, and Aldric had half of a mind to join her - he hadn't been in his bed in almost a year - but he was too enveloped in memories to do so. All around the room he looked, seeing the posters and remembering the days he'd bought them and the days he'd taped them up. His eyes eventually rested on the nightstand next to his bed, upon which were the few statues he owned, an alarm clock that blinked, as though it had been through a power outage or two.

His thoughts were interrupted when Gertie stuck her head between the ladder leading up to the second bunk. She panted loudly, tongue held out, begging to be loved by her lost owner, and Aldric obliged, smiling widely. His fleshy hand rubbed at her scalp, scratching at it as she leaned her head into his hand. This lasted until she tensed up, pulling her head back and turning her head to the window looking outside. Aldric stretched his radar and figured out what had gotten her attention - a lone SUV rolling into the driveway, it having been heard by the dog long before the human.

"Ho... Boy." Aldric sighed, feeling his heart begin to beat heavily in his chest. "Here we go." He said, patting his thigh and prompting the husky to follow him.

She bounded out of the room and back towards the front door, happily yipping along, tail wagging. Aldric followed her, sliding a glove onto his prosthetic hand as he heard someone walking up the stairs, each foot rattling the wood and echoing up into the house. Aldric made it to the door just as the woman reached the landing.

With little fanfare he opened the door, seeing her with a bag of groceries hanging from each arm. "Hey, need some help?" He grunted, peering out past her and seeing the SUV's trunk still open.

The woman nodded, her brown hair bobbing up and down at the ends, "yeah Neb, got some -" She blinked, "uh, some-" Sarah Aldric looked up from the keys she was fiddling with, seeing Nebo standing there, an eyebrow arced as he waited for the answer to his question.

The mother gaped at the son, and the son at the mother.

Then she said, "bring that shit in, then you can do the fucking dishes. It's been nine months." She shoved past him, though he noted she was trying to frown through something he suspected was a smile. "You better not have a baby in here!"

"Her name's Cherry and she's really looking forward to meeting her Granny!" He called over his shoulder, as he thundered down the stairs.

"Up yours, kid!" He heard, as his radar told him she'd dropped her groceries on the table and was now clenching her chest, right above her heart, tears freely flowing, now that she thought she was out of sight.

Aldric's voice wavered as he called back, "love you too, Grandma!"